The Department of Homeland Security has hired hundreds of security guards to protect scores of government buildings across the country as the federal agency prepares for terror threats and potential civil disorder in the United States.

“One company, Vendtech-SGI, LLC, of McLean, VA, landed a contract worth more than $311.5 million to provide about 600 guards to protect approximately 200 different posts at more than 130 separate buildings in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, according to a DHS notice posted online on Feb. 14,” reports GSN.

Master Security Company, LLC, of Hunt Valley, MD, was also awarded a $43.1 million contract to guard two facilities in Suitland, MD, and one each in Seabrook and Camp Springs, MD.

The contracts were awarded by the DHS’ Federal Protective Service, which is tasked with securing over 9,000 federally owned and leased buildings. The FPS also stoked controversy last month when it posted agents armed with semiautomatic guns at a Social Security office in Florida.

The armed agents checked identifications of locals as part of Operation Shield, an unannounced drill centered around “detecting the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.”

The newly hired security guards will provide “a mix of fixed and roving posts assignments, providing interior and exterior coverage, with some posts requiring 24/7 coverage,” according to the DHS.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The rush to hire hundreds of new security guards could also be related to Homeland Security’s repeated warnings about the threat of civil unrest sweeping the country.

In December, DHS chief Janet Napolitano directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.

The federal agency also announced last year that it was monitoring social media websites like Twitter and Facebook for domestic unrest, including “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department.”

This included monitoring remarks by residents of Standish, Michigan in “newspaper comment talkbacks, local blogs, Twitter posts, and publicly available Facebook posts,” to gage the response to a plan to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to a local prison.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.